


the only friend who whispers in your ear

by theviolonist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-05
Updated: 2014-03-05
Packaged: 2018-01-14 16:59:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1274146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theviolonist/pseuds/theviolonist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone said James had met Lily first, and that he'd fallen in love with her on the spot. None of those things were strictly true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the only friend who whispers in your ear

Everyone said James had met Lily first, and that he'd fallen in love with her on the spot. None of those things were strictly true. 

(Not that Remus had ever said anything about it, really.)

-

Remus Lupin met Lily Evans at the bottom of the stairs leading up the girls' dormitory. He was lost, hopelessly and woefully lost and it was the third month of classes. Peter had taken to the castle like it could talk to him, prided himself on navigating its endlessly shifting corridors, the only thing he seemed to do really well.

Leaning against the wall, trying to figure out how he was going to find his Astronomy class, Remus realized that most of the girls passing him by didn't see him. He didn't blame them, not really: after all he had always been one of _those_ boys, whose faces you can't really ever remember, so pale he seemed almost to blend in with the gray of the bricks. 

Lily saw him, though. Her gaze pierced through him like a spear, the color of a pond invaded by underwater weeds or a really deep sea. Remus noticed that when she widened her eyes at him her eyelids were almost invisible, so neatly folded it looked like they'd just been made. He noticed that sort of things about people. 

"What are you doing here," she asked warily, though there seemed to be a hint of gentle mockery in her voice, "are you a perv or something?"

Remus couldn't find his voice for a moment; then he did. "I can't find my Astronomy class," he said dumbly. 

"It's November," Lily said. 

Remus sighed. "I know."

He'd expected her to try and help, but she didn't. She gave him a smile and started walking away, like maybe she would forget him as soon as her eyes left his face, and at the end of the day he would be completely scrubbed from her consciousness. Remus didn't usually mind, but this time he found he did rather. Then –

"Well, are you coming?" Lily asked from over her shoulder, sounding slightly impatient. Her hair was really red – at this angle, with that light, it looked like her clothes might catch on fire at any moment, the fire slipping through her lose hairtie. "I'll walk you."

 _You don't even know where I'm going -_ Remus started to say (he was pretty sure they didn't have the same classes or professors, he would have noticed her), but then he thought better of it. He peeled his back from the wall. 

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I'm coming."

-

(He never really forgot Lily after that, though they rarely talked and he never introduced her to his friends, maybe sensing what was going to happen before it did, and fearing it. The day James's eyes fell on her – he had probably seen her a hundred times before, walking through the hallways and sitting at the Gryffindor table; Remus wondered what about that time made him click – and he declared melodramatically he would love her forever Remus didn't say anything. When Lily finally agreed to date James she only acknowledged him with a quiet nod of the head, nothing that James or Sirius would notice and nothing Peter would ever have the guts to mention, like she, too, thought they had somehow done something wrong while the other weren't looking, running through the corridors together to find Remus's Astronomy classroom on a November afternoon.)

-

It's not that Remus minds that James thinks Lily is _his_ \- well, maybe on Lily's behalf, because it's really quite offensive, but Lily doesn't need his protection and is more than capable of defending herself. Besides which she thinks – and has said, repeatedly and at various stages of loudness – that she thinks James is a complete and utter twat, and should leave her alone. The point being, James's infatuation with Lily doesn't bother Remus in itself. 

After all, he understands it: who wouldn't want to love Lily? She's quick and witty and beautiful, and for all James has claimed her as his soulmate Remus is pretty sure he's seen Sirius's eyes stray her way once or twenty times, and Peter's gaze rub her calves and the welcoming circle of her waist.

(He's pretty sure, too, that Lily is a nuclear apocalypse waiting to happen. But maybe it's just the hair.)

Nevermind: Remus is busy enough with his boys and his monthly transformations and the unravelling maze that is Hogwarts, riddled with magical traps. He has sensitive lungs, and though it's a few years removed he can already smell the ash rising, clogging his lungs. He doesn't tell anybody about that. What use has ever predicting the future been?

(There is one thing, though, about Lily. He'd loved her more when her last name was still Evans. When she was pregnant he sometimes hoped the hormones would drive her wild and she would tell James she didn't really like his name, like she'd told him. But she never did.)

-

Unlike James, Remus isn't very proprietary about love. When he first met the boys he had a few weeks of complete and dizzying infatuation with Sirius, the way his throat moved when he laughed and the sharp-tongued wit he liked to throw around indiscriminately to wound and to protect; the fierceness of him, that echoed something infinitely more violent stirring in Remus's quiet chest. It fizzled, it always fizzles – but he remembers. Lily isn't so different. Like Sirius, she comes to be around everyday, reassuringly unchanging and remarkably easy to love. 

So Remus does what he does best; he keeps loving them. It's not like it hurts anyone, and it's not like anyone notices, either.

-

(What Lily will not tell you, and will barely tell him, is that she's not near as inexhaustible as she appears. On the day of graduation every overdramatic movement James makes seems to suck the energy out of her bones for some reason, and Remus starts to understand why she liked to keep that boy Snivellus around. When he draws her aside on some flighty pretext she collapses forward, resting her forehead against the floating bones of his ribcage. _Thank you_ , she says, her voice all hollowed out like a shell from that sea Remus so often sees hanging around her shoulder, and he lets her take everything she needs from him, the anchor to her sinking ship.)

-

Remus only slept with Lily once. It was the summer after graduation, and James was off with Sirius doing something involving more magical pranks Remus cared to think about. Peter had to be somewhere with them, squirreled away in the shadows trailing in their wake, but Remus had declined with the excuse that the full moon was coming. It was, but he wasn't feeling it just yet; his blood wasn't singing, his bones weren't aching with the need to split open and birth a new creature.

Lily came over with Firewhisky, looking younger in her normal clothes than she ever had in her robes. "Girls' night in," she said excitedly, handing him the bottle and sitting cross-legged on his carpet.

They didn't drink that much, in the end, though it would provide an excuse the day after. The thing itself happened quietly, when night fell and the circles under Lily's eyes appeared more clearly in the yellow light, all the happenings of her life dumped on the shoulders of that nineteen-year-old girl, and the war coming, coming closer and closer as time wore on. By that time Remus had resigned himself to waiting.

"James wants to move in together," Lily said, even though what she was really saying was _James thinks I'm the love of his life, he wants a house and babies, preferably before we're both dead_ , because they were already basically living together and because there was nothing Remus was quite as good as he was reading Lily Evans's eyes and the crinkles of her mouth. 

"You should do it," Remus said, because that's what she wanted to hear. "He loves you."

James did love her. He loved her more, and arguably better, than Remus had ever known people to love, and he did it with his usual Potter panache, with all the arrogance and showy strength of a god. 

She smiled at him. "You're probably right."

He wasn't, but he didn't say that, either: all his relationship with Lily was about the things they didn't say, and besides there was no telling the future this time, with the complex and undecipherable interweaving of human relationships. Remus knew; he'd tried, but he'd always found himself a little off the mark.

(Though they were going to be fine, the five of them. How could it be otherwise?)

Lily didn't say anything that could explain or justify her actions before she rose on her knees and leaned in to kiss Remus, very patiently like she wasn't sure he would understand. But she got bored with it soon enough and when it appeared he wouldn't pull away she gave in to it, her body caving in on itself and into his arms. He threaded his fingers behind her back. When he undid her brad clasp he thought, I've gotten quite good at this.

It wasn't the end-all, be-all of his relationship with Lily. It wasn't mind-blowing. It wasn't even the best fuck he'd ever had, or her, from what he could tell. It anything it was a little sad, with the alcohol and the carpet burn and the war looming in the horizon. Still, they put their minds and hearts into it, and it was messy and inappropriate but it felt good for a second, getting to taste James on Lily's lips and Lily in the crease on her thighs, having her kiss his scars like she really meant it, like she understood, which none of the girls he'd fucked before really had.

Afterwards she put her clothes back on but she didn't leave. He offered to make a pot of tea and she nodded, so he made Earl Grey with lots of honey for her and a dash of milk for him. She didn't ask him not to tell James, or tell him that she had changed her mind about anything.

When she left dawn was bleeding like an abused hussy over the roofs of London; Lily pressed her cheek against his and, like on the day of their graduation, said "Thank you" in her soft, exhausted voice, like she was apologizing for using him though they both knew he didn't really mind. 

He didn't watch her leave, or offer his minuscule chimney for her to get back home; as soon as the door closed behind her he slipped between his sheets and slept for thirteen hours straight. 

(They never spoke about it again, which was fine with Remus. There wasn't much to speak about.)

-

It's probably wise to mention that Remus loves James, too. He never had the same kind of debilitating crush that kept him occasionally looking at Sirius with stars in his eyes until he was carded off to Azkaban, but in a way that other sort of love, borne from friendship and quietly all-consuming, is even more dangerous. Remus didn't realize he couldn't live without James until he had to, and it nearly killed him.

In a backwards way, the day Remus felt the least fondness for James was the day he and Lily got married. Lily was pregnant to the teeth but everything was damn near perfect, as things tended to be around James – even though he was known to wreak havoc everywhere he passed he also trailed behind him a soothing and exhilarating power that made people happy. Go figure, Remus had often thought. In a world where changing books into ferrets wasn't uncommon, James and his people-gardening hands weren't that out of place.

He couldn't help being annoyed, though, that day. He stood under the canopy like the best man he was, and hugged and kissed until he felt dizzy with it, but at the end of the day he came home and felt instantly, brutally alone, and the need arose in him to be cruel in whatever way he could allow himself. He broke a few plates, and it didn't pass, though he felt a bit better. I've never loved Lily that much, he thought, and it was annoying, that he couldn't get over her white dress and James's ridiculous penguin tuxedo.

But he went to sleep and in the morning he felt better, if a bit nauseous. Over breakfast he wondered how James and Lily were going to name their baby, if leaving the two of them – manic, passionate, maddening and _young_ as they were – to raise a child was really a good idea, if he was going to be a godfather. 

When he asked James later that day – there was no time or finances for a honeymoon, and besides, as Lily said, avoiding looking at Remus, "all the people we love are right there" - James looked at him like he was a complete moron before throwing his head back and laughing. "Don't be silly," he said finally, still a little teary from laughter, "of course you're going to be a godfather."

Remus caved and admitted it was a pretty stupid question to ask, all things considered; still, he felt better afterwards. 

-

One of the thoughts about Lily that came back to him frequently over the years was whether she felt left out when they were all turned. Their varying sizes made it difficult to really communicate in animal form but there was still a thrill to it, a clear and dizzying _rush_ that couldn't be imitated. When they let themselves loose in the sloping plains behind Hogwarts and the wind whipped their flanks Remus sometimes wished they never had to be human again. 

If Lily minded, though, she never said anything. When Harry was born she asked his little shriveled, ugly smiling form "what kind of animal" he was. James took it literally, said Harry was going to a stag if anything. Lily laughed, "Of course you think that," but didn't deny it, either. Remus kind of wished she would have volunteered an animal of her own, something to make her more real, an animal that he could make run besides them on moonless night, swift and invisible. He didn't ask her. 

-

(Who would've thought they would all die, and Remus would be the last one left standing? Who would have thought that, in a million years?)

-

The day Lily and James were killed Remus felt like his heart was stopping, literally stopping; that it had turned into a clock and the minute hand would start ticking backwards, forcefully ripping the past out of his flesh. He thought about the things he regretted, he thought about running, and he thought about evil. He regretted never having kissed - _really_ kissed – James when he wasn't drunk. He thought about Harry, and felt panic.

But most of all he felt dizzy, like all the memories of all the years spent together with Lily and James had chosen this exact time to start unwind before his eyes, like the popular myth was wrong and their lives weren't flashing before their eyes at the last second but before his, instead, forcing him down to a crouch and leaving him to grind his teeth through it. 

Lily coming down the stairs, her hair bleeding through the black of her robe; James smiling at him from the side of the lake; James and his effortlessly cruel smirk, taunting Severus; Lily in a riot with her wand brandished, red-faced and unsmiling; James and Lily kissing at their wedding, their lips cleaving, Lily biting James's bottom lip laughingly, even though Remus hadn't watched, had looked away... James outside the hospital room, holding his head and looking completely out of his depth; Lily and her sister arguing in a London street where they had met by chance; Sirius and James with their arms slung over one another's shoulders, excited and whispered and looking younger than their seventeen years; Lily on her back on his carpet, her eyes watchful as she undid his belt; James in his stag form jumping over a brook, his flanks tense and smooth.

There was the taste of ashes again. Who would have thought they would all die, Remus wondered, and I would be the last one left standing? He wondered where all the others were. Everything was quiet. It was the end of the war; well, a strange ending for a strange war.

When he stood up, even though there was no dust on his robes, Remus brushed his knees. He regretted never taking the time to believe in God, and swallowed the bile in his throat. 

-

Everyone said Harry was a picture of his mother, and had the boldness and courage of his father, even though none of those things were strictly true. 

One day in Grimmauld Place, after keeping it in for so long Remus had started to worry it would rot his insides, Harry came to him. Remus made an effort not to flinch and look away. Harry sat facing him, his hands flat on the table, wound up and tense and looking like he had suffered more than any eighteen-year-old boy ever should. 

"So," he took a breath, "what were my parents like?"


End file.
